JOINT U. S. NAVY-DUKE UNIVERSITY FOOT SATURATION DIVE.

Descriptive Note:

Final rept.,

Corporate Author:

NAVY EXPERIMENTAL DIVING UNIT WASHINGTON D C

Personal Author(s):

Report Date:

1969-04-14

Pagination or Media Count:

53.0

Abstract:

Five Experimental subjects were exposed to a simulated depth of 1000 feet of seawater in the Duke University hyperbaric chamber complex. The compression phase was completed over a 24 hour and 22 minute period, an average descent rate of 1.5 minutes per foot. The subjects remained at the 1000 foot depth for 77 hours and 30 minutes. This was followed by 284 hours of decompression, a rate of approximately 15 minutes per foot with four hour stops at ten staging depths. An extensive series of biomedical, diving equipment and human performance tests were conducted during each phase of the dive sequence. Oxygen and carbon dioxide levels were very accurately controlled within safe limits, though the oxygen was manipulated periodically to meet the requirements of specific biomedical experiments. These observations indicate that divers can perform well under these conditions if life support systems maintain a level of support equivalent to that at the surface. Author